The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal provided an easy passage between Philadelphia and Baltimore for freight and passengers, shortening travel between the two cities and improving access to Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley and its large supplies of coal and lumber for markets along the Delaware River. It also gave Baltimore a much shorter route to the Atlantic and allowed finished goods, including household furnishings, textiles, foodstuffs such as fish from the Delaware River, and gunpowder from the DuPont powder mills, to move west. In the 1870s, the Ericsson Line, previously limited to freight service, began carrying passengers between Philadelphia and Baltimore with the Lord Baltimore and the William Penn, vessels built especially for canal passage. Freight tolls depended on the commodity shipped and its weight or value; in 1851, one thousand pounds of cocoa cost 40¢ to ship through the canal, while one thousand pounds of rags cost 20¢, a cord of oak or pine cost 40¢, and a cord of hickory cost 50¢. After the federal government took ownership in 1919, passage through the canal became free. Steamboats appeared on the Delaware River soon after the War of 1812 and by the 1820s regularly traveled between Philadelphia and resorts farther south along the coast. The Thomas Clyde, built by Pusey and Jones in Wilmington in 1878, carried passengers on excursion trips from Philadelphia to places along the river, including Augustine Beach, Penns Grove, Salem, and Carneys Point, where travelers breakfasted aboard, listened to an orchestra, danced on deck, went ashore for leisure and entertainment, and returned home at the end of the day.